[A Beer a Day] Einhorn Berliner Weisse | Austin Beerworks | Austin, TX

Buzz is an unpredictable beast made even more capricious by something as fickle and competitive as the Austin beer market.  I am sort-of in awe of the madness it would take to run a brewery especially one susceptible to such extreme hype that the demand far exceeds the supply.  But because craft beer is still by-and-large a niche product, one still is having to chase money up the ladder in order to stay on top of the game in terms of relevancy.

Enter the buzzy brewery that has been contradicting the grueling calisthenics of running Austin's eponymous beerworks.  So, maybe they haven't figured it all out yet, but they sure as shit are making things look easy.

For most brewers, caring about beer is nice, but caring about beer is pretty easy.  Brewing is a lumbering dinosaur of non-glamour and continued education -- the way most of our shitty, alcohol-free jobs are -- but with a much more discerning and unforgiving audience.  A misstep is recoverable, two is a Flying Wallenda swan dive into the abyss.  As Mark Renton says, "It's a tightrope, Spud. It's a fuckin' tightrope".

What impresses me most about Austin Beerworks is the sophistication in which they credited their market with from the get-go.  They were going to attempt a trickle-down from the most cogent of beer dorks and build their campaign from superb branding and word-of-mouth from your most obnoxious friends.  I know, because I'm one of those people.  Combined with the first-rate talent of their brewers, Austin Beerworks blazed onto the city's #trending beer market with four, exceptionally-tasting, oil-canned hydraulics.  While people around the state were elbowing in the aisles for their final, legal cans O.G. 4Loko, Austinites were being introduced to an O.G. formula brewed without any kind of palatal prejudice.  It was the most successful entry into any kind of Austin retail outside of the highly-ascendent, but short-lived Free Money Emporium and Brothel.

Most people would bite their own hand off to make just one successful beer; by their first few months in existence Austin Beerworks had four.  That is precisely the apex at which most humans would relax and count their millions.

But at the risk of over-fellating with prose, Austin Beerworks motored through the bright lights of triumph with several exceptional seasonal beers, worthy of exceeding the baseline measurement for 'beer-trading bait' had they only been able to can the stuff.  

---

Did you know that the intended theme to the TV sitcom Cheers was to be a song originally penned for a Broadway musical called "People Like Us"?  Not until all sorts of litigation threats and alternate version denials was the universally recognized and beloved "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" approved.  The world is better for it.

In an alternate universe, people gather around bartops in this country and sing about pearls and ascots and other kinds of tomfuckery related to the original Cheers song.  In that variant landscape, success is not measured by "who knows your name" because walking into a familiar bar either 100% guaranteed that everybody already did or 100% guaranteed that they did not -- if that makes sense.  You didn't have to earn your recognition based on merit and consistency the way Norm did.

But in this very correct, and very reputation-forward universe, everybody could potentially know your name because you fucking earned that shit through achievement and dependability.

When I walk into a bar in the future, and I say, 'Barkeep' pointing downward towards the vacant drink coaster in front of me -- the way Norm did on almost every show -- I would like for that to gesturally refer to this beer.  I want its reputation to precede me.  I want everyone to know its name.

Einhorn is pound-for-pound, pretty much the best summer beer I've ever tasted -- and that is comparatively assessed against the giants of summertime like Bell's Oberon, Boulevard's Tank 7, 21st Amendment's Hell or High Watermelon Wheat, Dale's Pale Ale, Dogfish Head Festina Peche, and so on.

The immediate tenor of the beer is that it is superbly tart and deftly citrusy -- not in the clumsy way I find most brewers who've rushed a sour to market.  Einhorn had the dextrous finesse of apples, pineapple, citrus, and other subtle palm tree fruit mingling with fancy champagne notes.   It was gentle on the palate and crisp at the bookends of my articulators.  It was sweet without being either sugary or syrupy -- and most importantly, it hit the key characteristic of any worthy summertime ale: cold, bright, and effervescent.

Should I ever be stranded on a desert island, or if I'm ever called upon to answer such an immediate question during a round of what people call shooting-the-shit, I'll call upon this like the goddam fatman walking into his local: "Einhorn!"


ABV: 3.5%
Acquired: Billy's on Burnet
★★★★★★★★★★

[A Beer a Day] Inebriator Imperial Stout | Sonoran Brewing | Scottsdale, AZ

Basically, the underlying motivation behind starting a beer blog and prattling on and on about something so subjective, is the general feeling that ‘fuck this is so good, everyone has to try this!’

The two main focuses of [AA] are the topics of beer and music, subjects so widely variant and the spectrum so broad, that one can find an approachable niche and style that appeases their sensibilities without feeling intimidated by a segregate force.  Diversity is what makes these two categories great and worth discussing at length because opinions are so particular, yet variegated.  Above all, the best thing about enjoying particular kinds of beer or music is just about ways of expressing your love for it and trying to spread that message as far and wide as you can.

However, sometimes a bit of guidance is necessary, because when the masses are allowed to make a collective decision, then we get fucking Bud Light Platinum and Kid Rock beer.

So, when we're talking about risky investments involving your hard-earned cash and the momentum of your post-work evening, one should have a good reference point on which to rely.  Even more so when discussing very small brands that haven't paid for (read: can't afford) prime real estate in your local booze dealership. 

This is why I want to talk about a spectacular brewery that very few people outside of Arizona have heard of -- and because of that fact, are missing out on a very nice risk:reward investment ratio.

Sonoran Brewing is a tiny (by comparison to other breweries talked about on [AA]) brewery housed in a restaurant in North Scottsdale.  However, Sonoran has also been making craft beers since 1996, which was like the Stone Age of brewing, and therefore, archeologists have descended upon their brew house to study how they've come so far without being recognized nationally.

So, when I opened my care package from my friends in Arizona, I was exceptionally beside myself to see that this was one of the goodies.  I was in danger of being blown away from just the labeling.

If you are a frequent reader of [AA], you would kinda-vaguely remember that imperial stouts make my emotions pique like the opening two minutes of Arcade Fire's Wake Up.  I hesitate to call anything my favorite, but they are up there with The Smiths and College Football Saturdays. 

I didn't get to this beer right away, as I thought this could use a little nap in the Cellar after traveling so far and being completely out of its desert environment.  It was also a rarity in my personal stash, and I always have a bit of a hard time uncorking those.  But I thought that a good time to unfurl this would be with the fam on my wife's first Mothers Day at a very, very gratifying outdoor restaurant in our neighborhood on what would be the last pleasant-weather day in Austin's history.  That was a chewy sentence, but then so was this beer.

Inebriator Imperial Stout tasted like it had been steeped in a coffee pot for hours, while you sat reading the morning paper.  It was the first bold characteristic I noticed, but certainly not the most overt, as I would come to find out.  That characteristic would be the 70% dark chocolate notes that popped up right between the sweet cream of the coffee and the perfectly muted semi-sweet roasted nuts and slightly bitter hop profile that comes along with its 75 IBUs.  

This made me think of some kind of rapscallionery going on in the minds of the brewers here, like it was one-part Dry Irish and two-parts American revival stout.  This beer had origins in the Old World, but came to the Southwest of America to hide from its demons back home.

Many imperial stouts seem like they're trying to imitate the big, boozy cliche of other imperial stouts, but Inebriator really leapt out on its own.  In the modern era of American stouts, Inebriator was heavy on the characteristics of the Big 4: body, color, flavor and ABV -- the starting Center that you would want your NBA expansion team to be built around.  This beer does not listen to Brit Pop, it does not listen to Math Rock, it does not even listen to Thrash Metal.  It listens to the sound of your soul being sucked through your liver like it was shrouded in a cheese cloth.

Very nice work.

ABV: 9.1%
Acquired: Beer trade from PHX (Thx Whitney & Scott!)
★★★★★★★★★☆

[A Beer a Day] Small Batch No. 1 Oak Aged Rye Oatmeal Pale Ale | Ranger Creek Brewing & Distilling | San Antonio, TX

Somebody much wiser than myself once uttered these words, 'Writing about music is like dancing to architecture'.  Its a very stark theory strongly indicating that one medium cannot crossover to another because scribed missive is without similar and relevant emotions to an aural score.

This reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a local Austin brewer regarding the feeling of beer, or as he explained it, emotive terroir.  This descriptive is to suggest that beer can wildly alter its visceral make-up depending on the immediate geographical environment of its consumption, the company in which it is being shared, its sequentially consumable competition, and other factors influencing how you enjoy a beer.  Writing about beer, in this subjective and highly variable regard, is very much like dancing to architecture. 

The first of anything I tasted from Ranger Creek was their Oatmeal Pale Ale (OPA) while snorting to the pre-feature shorts at The Alamo Drafthouse along with my wife, on what was probably the bookend of a cozy winter Sunday.  For anyone who frequents The Alamo for their film-screening needs, there are certain rituals that make it one of the best places on Earth to be at any given moment.

One of those things is the muted 15-20 minutes of movie build-up while you sip your first pint in the dim glow of the screen, next to a carefully selected companion whom also enjoys the same rituals of watching movie in this type of environment.

Its this environment in which I imagine film producers -- like the previously alluded to, record producers -- wish their final product to be enjoyed, a ceremony of pomp, with their art and exhumed energy as the headliner.  Record producers and music artists, likewise, want their audiences to listen to their carefully engineered albums in sequential track order for lack of losing their interpretation of the music; then listen to a live performances with scattered spontaneity in order to capture an emotional connection between old material, new material, and the anticipation of an invigorating encore containing both.

In a way, I think brewers are like these industry producers.  They rely on your immediate glandular sensations to impart affection and desire in a new product, then impart loyalty by playing the old hits.  In the case of Ranger Creek, they captured my loyalty with their OPA, the perfect movie time terroir, then inspired some suggestive throes with the release of their Small Batch No.1, a mysteriously shrouded Burnt-orange bottle invoking sexual commerce from their fans.  Labeling a beer 'Small Batch' amongst the bottle-share crowd, is as imminently dangerous as shouting "Fire" in crowded theater (unless its at The Alamo, of course, cos then they'll just remove you for being a loud asshole).





In what was a trouser-wetting move to a smartphone populous of beer dorks, Ranger Creek provided the full description and tasting notes embedded in a QR code on each of the bottles' suitcoat. You want to be the first to know what this stuff is all about -- including the all-important information of beer style?  Catch me if you can.  Beer nerds are notorious "Me first, me first" people -- like all those trolling comments on your local paper's online site.  This was the ultimate in industry producer build-up.

Given that I really liked OPA, I thought there was a pretty solid chance that I would really love the oak barrel-aged version of it.  I was right.  The first thing I noticed* is that it had a very nice weight without being cluttered -- like the OPA with more guitars.  The entire palate retained that nice, original creaminess from the OPA oats, but also healthy tree bark from the rye bill.  I was just a tiny bit underwhelmed by the oak-barrel profile, as I thought it didn't really impart anything exciting to the recipe -- probably because it only marinated for one month in the barrels (a very abbreviated amount of time in the brewing kingdom).

Despite that, I definitely understood Ranger Creek's objective here: a muddled Texas tree fruit, slightly Bretted, earthy, smoothly hopped finished, summertime drinker.  It tasted like Texas.  Terroir.  Long may it continue.

ABV: 7.o%
Acquired: Central Market
★★★★★★★★☆☆

* Okay, I thought this could be the first review that didn't mention the wax seal, which smells like like UT's Jester Dormitory in April, but it didn't bother me unless I actively put my nose on it and sniffed.  It was fun suggesting my unsuspecting wife do that too.

[A Beer a Day] More Black Than Brown IPA | Stone/Ninkasi/The Alchemist Brewing | Escondido, CA/Eurgene, OR/Waterbury, VT

I will apologize in advance for the blatant themery that will be going on in [AA] this week, and this is because this is the seven-day advent that not only commemorates my wedding anniversary, but also contains the calendar week in which I met this love assassin, as well as the week that I asked her to spend a lifetime of rabble-rousing in breweries and scummy concert venues with me -- all in successive years, of course -- this isn't the 1950s, where all of that was done between coffee break and lunch.

In honor of our alliance as master collaborators in life and love, I present to you [An Avenue]'s Collaboration Week.

Part I.  Part II.  Part III.

Part IV of IV.

Stone is the pantheon of wondrousness.  It is one of the breweries who's candidacy to be cast onto the Rushmore of Craftery would not be disputed with much fervor. Like the first generation before them -- and with peerage like Dogfish Head, New Belgium, and the similar brewhouses --  the path that they've illuminated for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th generations of micros in the United States is, without question, heroic.

For this collaboration -- as is the typical theme for Stone's Collaboration Series -- they invited two other renowned brewhouses to their workshop in Escondido to conjure up another unique recipe to represent this spectacular series.  In this case, Stone colluded with two evasive (in Texas) breweries from Oregon and Vermont on a wintertime, dark IPA.  This collaboration was very well represented in name:


... but would it hurt anyone's feelings if I said I wasn't particularly convinced of this beer's ambition?  More Brown than Black IPA tastes like a rushed experiment that didn't meet the expectations of any of the brewers involved, but decided to just go with it anyway.

Incidentally, the name of the beer itself kinda conjures up the idea that their original pursuit was not realized, aiming for the wildly trendy black IPA, but instead coming up short in both body and color.  Should I be more offended that a semi-clever re-branding was a major bluff by these super-brewers, or the fact that I impulsively paid $5.99/ea for four 12-ounce bottles because I'd been delighted with this series in the past?

I did not particularly fancy the pine resin notes and felt the base was too watery. The color seemed clumsy and the flavor profile was not as nuanced as you would expect from these brewers.  For a west coast IPA, this was not very assertive.

Stone is certainly allowed a misstep every now and again in the opinion of this fanboi -- and I'm certainly not a Stone acolyte by any means -- but typically they are a very disciplined brewery who work their asses off to maintain their cache. More Brown than Black hasn't changed that opinion, but I am just more aware that their collaborations are not always the carnival of masturbation they present themselves to be.

ABV: 7.4%
Acquired: Side Door 
★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

[A Beer a Day] Drink'in the Sunbelt (2011) Wheat Ale | Jester King / Mikkeler | Austin, TX / Copenhagen, DK

I will apologize in advance for the blatant themery that will be going on in [AA] this week, and this is because this is the seven-day advent that not only commemorates my wedding anniversary, but also contains the calendar week in which I met this love assassin, as well as the week that I asked her to spend a lifetime of rabble-rousing in breweries and scummy concert venues with me -- all in successive years, of course -- this isn't the 1950s, where all of that was done between coffee break and lunch.

In honor of our alliance as master collaborators in life and love, I present to you [An Avenue]'s Collaboration Week.

Part I.   Part II.

Part III of IV.

In the year of its infancy, Jester King opened their farmhouse gates to Danish gypsy brewer Mikkeler to make beer and make merry.  Since Mikkeler is in the business of providing sketch-ups to masterpieces for many, many artisinal brewers around the US and around the world, I thought -- at the time when I procured this bottle -- that it was quite the score for the cache of Jester King, and honestly, for people like myself who are positively crazy about this kind of shit.

Famously, amongst my beer friends (which is only a collection of like two or three people -- the rest just look at me like I'm syndromatic), I claimed Jester King as a brewery way above their heads as a start-up, and I really couldn't see eye-to-eye with any of their lineup for a long time.

But, when they started bottling their beers, I felt that they had turned a very sharp corner by bottle conditioning their goodies the way St. Augustine intended them to be.  I switched my opinion about Jester King, and started stalking shelves for everything I could find with this Mephistolic logoswag and syncopathic verbiage.  I was hooked.

When I first sampled Drinkin' in the Sunbelt last year at the spectacular Black Star Co-Op -- which was debuting the first pressing of this beer -- I was woefully disgusted to the point that I would have storm-drain poured the rest of the pint had I wanted to contaminate Austin's drinking supply.  Instead, I suffered through an infected, cardboard-flavored boner-killer.  It was fucking terrible.

But, as mentioned above, the plot twist in the second act was that I ended up hunting for the vessel'ed version because Jester King and Mikkeler put some gnarly-assed artwork on it.  That was pretty hard to resist.  So, I bought two bottles in hopes that bottling had done some hocus-pocus to an otherwise horrible beer the same way it did Wytchmaker and Black Metal.

It was no better than Okay.

Grassy and thin, citrus-like yeast, and some muddled hops (which is entirely my fault, which I will later discuss).  The body was saison-esque, which I really liked, but the punch of collaborative excitement just never really emerged.  It was locally good, not internationally great.  But, had this beer gone to market even as recently as three years ago, it would have been the best thing brewed in Austin -- but currently, as a beer culture, we have already bypassed the threshold for this beer.

Jester King wears the family crest of farmhouse ales, which is a wonderful niche in a budding market, but their beer also has the tendency to all taste very similar to each other -- too similar, I think, when recalling your gustatory memory.  Jester King, in this regard, is in danger of becoming a cliche.

I'm not gonna have a tantrum about it -- but this beer was pretty disappointing considering the arrangement of architects behind its construction.  I will admit that, 1) this beer could have stayed cellared for too long, which killed its hop profile (as I mentioned earlier, my fault), 2) there was an astronomical improvement from that pint at Black Star to this one in my backyard a year later, and 3) at the time of production, Jester King were just working a lot of newbie things out, and with that consideration, it was a pretty decent, drinkable beer -- despite being a girlie 4% ABV.

Getting anywhere in the business of brewing is hard work, so I'm in no way disparaging what Jester King is doing.  We should preserve the craft of farmhouse beer made famous in the Walloon Region and Northern France.  Just not the shitty ones.

ABV: 4.2%
Acquired: Spec's 
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆